The Mirror's Tale (Further Tales Adventures) (3 page)

Will awoke that night, flailing under his blanket. Something was pinching his nostrils closed. His eyes focused on Bert, grinning down at him.

“What’s the matter with you?” Will said after he swatted Bert’s hand away.

“Do you know how hard it is to wake you up?”

“I couldn’t sleep at all for a while,” Will muttered. “I kept thinking about Margaret. What did you get me up for, anyway?”

“I think I know what Father and Smelly Ed were talking about.”

Will ground his knuckles into his eyes. “Can’t you tell me tomorrow?”

“This is too good to wait! Come on,” Bert said. He led the way to the door, eased it open, and crept out into the dark hallway. Will took up his usual position a few steps behind. They moved with practiced stealth past the room where their mother and father slept, and padded down the wide, curving stairs to the great hall. A tall candle burned at the foot of the steps. Bert produced a smaller candle and holder from his pocket and held its wick to the flame. “We need to see the maps,” he whispered to Will.

They crossed the main hall and passed through a slender archway into the small, musty chamber where the baron kept his maps. A broad table stood against the back wall. Above it were ten rows of pigeonholes,
filled with rolled parchments that stuck out above the table. “Here, I think it’s this one,” said Bert, He pulled out the longest parchment. Dust floated gently down, tiny bits of matter illuminated by the light of the candle.

Bert spread his arms wide to unroll the big map, shoving the candle to the rear of the table to make room. There were smooth river stones on the table to keep the parchments from curling. He placed one on each corner of the map.

“We shouldn’t be here. We’re already in trouble,” Will said.

“Too late! Were here. So, you know what Father’s chief responsibility is, right?”

Will yawned. “I’m too tired to remember.”

Bert let out an exaggerated sigh. “Come on, Will. You know full well; you’re the one who pokes his nose into the archives all the time. Ambercrest is one of the most remote castles in the kingdom—only The Crags is farther north, and nobody cares about that place. Father is supposed to keep watch on the borders for our enemies.
These
borders.” Bert tapped his finger on the parchment.

The map showed the northern reaches of the kings realm. Bert’s finger drummed on the mountains just north of Ambercrest and The Crags, mountains labeled with a phrase that Will read aloud: “The realm of the Dwergh.”

“That’s right, the Dwergh. I think that’s what the patrol saw out there, somewhere between here and The
Crags. Remember what Smelly Ed said to Father, that whoever it was just disappeared? That’s what those filthy little Dwergh do—they crawl into their holes where you can’t find them. Like moles.”

“How do you know they’re filthy?” Will asked. “You’ve never seen one.”

“I’ve heard stories, Will. They’re grubby, greedy monsters. They’re strong, but they’re short—shorter than you and me, even. They’ll kill you for the gold on your fingers. I heard they steal babies and eat them. And do you know what they do to prisoners? It’s too horrible to describe.”

“Really?” Will said, looking with dread at the peaks on the map. “But … they’re not all like that, right? What about the ones that helped our great-great-grandmother? Or whatever she was.”

“Two more greats, I think. Listen, Will, those Dwergh might have saved her from the Witch-Queen. But they didn’t do it for
her,
they did it for themselves. They probably made her promise to give them all the jewels at The Crags in exchange for protecting her.”

“I never thought of it that way,” Will said. He rubbed the back of his head. “Do you really think the Dwergh are back?”

“I hope so. It’s so boring around here, guarding a border when the enemy’s been hiding inside mountains for fifty years. Why wait? We should just go after them. What a fight that would be!”

“Bert, don’t you ever read the stuff I show you? You can’t just march into their mountains. It’s bad strategy. First off, they’ve already got the high ground. And how are you going to supply your army? You can’t even—”

“Oh please,” Bert interrupted, waving his hand. “You and those translations. It’s stupid, all that stuff about strategies and deception. You have to charge right at them, that’s what Father would do” Bert frowned, wondering why the map was suddenly so much easier to read. A flickering orange glow had flooded the room. Will gasped, and Bert’s head jerked up, and his eyes nearly burst from their sockets.

The candle that Bert pushed to the back of the table had ignited the map just above it, and the flames leaped eagerly to the other parchments.

“Let’s get out of here!” cried Bert.

“No, we have to put it out!” Will said.

“What? Right!” said Bert. He pulled the candle away from the pigeonholes and swatted at the flames with his open palm. “Ouch!” Bits of burning paper floated about, and a few more maps began to smolder. A dense cloud of smoke gathered in the chamber’s rounded ceiling. “Will, get the water bucket by the hearth!”

Will’s grimace nearly stretched from one ear to the other as he ran into the great hall, where the day’s fire had settled into a sputtering gray heap. He lifted the iron bucket with a grunt and waddled awkwardly back
to the chamber with the pail swinging between his legs. By the time he got back, Bert had stripped off his nightshirt and was batting the flaming ends of the parchments. “Put the bucket on the table!” he said, trying not to shout.

Bert grabbed the parchments and stuck the burning ends into the bucket, where they hissed like snakes. When the last of the maps had been extinguished, he and Will crammed them back into the holes. They stepped back and looked at the result. Soggy, blackened parchments stuck out at all angles with a third of their lengths burned away by the fire. Will shook his head and groaned. “Maybe they won’t notice.”

“Right.
Now
let’s get out of here,” Bert said, picking up his charred nightshirt. “You’d better put the bucket back”

Will lifted the pail. When he turned and saw Edward blocking the archway and staring at them, he dropped it again. The bucket tipped over, and the water sloshed out into a puddle that engulfed Edward’s feet.

The boys froze. Edward sniffed the air and looked at the cloud of smoke still trapped overhead. His eyebrows rose as he glanced at the ruined maps, and then at Bert standing naked with a strand of smoke still drifting up from the nightshirt he held bunched against his waist.

“We didn’t do it,” Bert ventured.

Edward snorted.

“You won’t tell, will you?” Will asked in a strangled voice.

“Let’s see,” Edward said. “I could say nothing, then have your father use me for an archery target when he finds out I lied. Or I could say something, and you two ruffians could get what you deserve. Dear me, what should I do?”

Will closed his eyes and shivered, thinking about the look on his mother’s face when Edward led her to the map chamber. When she ordered them to their room, it was with a colder fury than he’d ever seen before. Starting that fire wasn’t the worst thing they’d ever done, but something about her expression told Will they’d made one mistake too many. “What do you think they’re going to do.”

“Dunno. Maybe Father will have us beheaded,” Bert replied. He was at the window, staring into the black sky. “Hush for a minute,” he said. He stuck his head out and cocked his ear toward the left. Will got out of bed and leaned out with him. Their parents were talking in the room next door, and their voices were rising.

“Can’t quite hear what they’re saying,” Will said. “Doesn’t sound promising, though.”

“It doesn’t,” Bert agreed. “I wish they didn’t lock us in. Otherwise we could just sneak out and listen at their door.” His expression brightened. He ran to his bed,
reached underneath it, and pulled out a coiled rope from the clutter of objects that was crammed into the narrow space.

“Bert, I don’t think that’s a good—”

“They’re talking about us!” Bert said. “Don’t you want to know what the punishment will be?” He knotted one end of the rope around his waist and threw the rest of the coil to his brother. “Tie this end to something, in case I slip. Although death might be better than what they’re planning.”

“You’re crazy,” Will said wearily. He knelt to tie the rope to the foot of his bed.

“Not crazy,” Bert replied, grinning. “Just terribly brave” He stuck his legs out the window and lowered himself on his stomach until his elbows rested on the sill. He probed with his toes until he found a narrow ledge of stone, an inch or so wide, that ran just below the second story of the castle. He and Will had spent countless hours edging their way along the walls of the keep—but always on the first floor, where a slip would only send them a few feet to the ground. Here, the courtyard was at least twenty feet below. Bert didn’t see any of the night watchmen down there. And that was good. To them he would look like an assassin creeping toward the baron’s room.

He edged away from the window, looked for tiny cracks between the stones that he could use as finger-holds, and slid his feet along the ledge, an inch at a time.
Will watched his slow progress and fed the rope out, ready to hold on tight if his brother lost his balance.

By the time Bert was halfway to his parent’s window, he could hear their conversation clearly.

“They’ll never change, you know,” his mother said.

“Hellions, both of them,” his father replied. “And punishment only makes them more rebellious.”

“But why do they do this, Walter? It’s almost as if they are
trying
to upset me. To get back at me for something.”

“But what have you … what have
we
ever done to them to deserve all this?”

“Nothing, I’m sure. But they’re wild and unruly, and something must be done. What if they’d burned themselves to death? What would the king’s court say about us then?”

Thanks, Mother,
Bert thought. There was a long silence that was somehow worse than their words. He managed to creep to the very edge of the window before his mother spoke again, much more softly.

“Walter, do you remember the story of your grandfather’s assault on the Northmen? How he won the day?”

“Of course,” said the baron. He sounded relieved to change the topic. “The armies faced each other across a wide plain. Grandfather concentrated his forces on the center of the Northmen’s line and attacked there, splitting the army into two.”

“Just so.”

There was another long silence. Somewhere in the dark courtyard below, a dog growled. It occurred to Bert that the topic had not changed at all Inside the room the same thing occurred to his father.

“You think we should separate the boys.”

“Yes! Send one to live with your brother at The Crags. Not forever, only for the summer. And keep one with us. It may be the only way to tame them.”

No,
Bert thought. His brain faltered, and his knees went limp. He tightened his grip on the edge of the windowsill and turned to look back at Will, who leaned out the window with a puzzled look on his face.

“Separate the boys,” the baron said again, as if he was trying to get used to the idea.

“They lead each other into trouble. Bertram leads William into trouble, to be more exact.”

“But they’ve always been together. From the day they were born. I can hardly remember seeing one without the other.”

“That’s the problem, don’t you see?” she said. Bert leaned closer. His parents were so close to the window that he could hear the rustle of fabric as his mother drew nearer to his father. Bert could picture what was happening inside. He’d seen it before. When his mother really wanted his father to agree to something, she’d slide up beside him and lock her hands around his waist. “It will be a shock, but a shock is what they need,” she said. “Honestly, Walter, there have been times when
I wonder if I even love them, they are so troublesome. I know you feel the same way, you don’t even have to say it. We must do something. You need to name your successor before long, and how can you even choose between them now? Ones a monster, the other’s a … a
mouse.
”

There was another pause, the longest yet. Bert realized that he was trembling, down to the tips of his fingers and toes. He squeezed his eyes shut. Don’t do it, Father, he thought.
Don’t listen to her. Well be good, I promise. I’ll stop getting Will into trouble, I swear it.

His fathers voice again drifted out into the night. “Which would we send?”

“Will, I suppose,” his mother said. “He won’t misbehave and embarrass us the way Bert would. Will’s clever enough, but he’s as meek as a lamb without his brother to follow.”

Bert swallowed hard and felt a lump in his throat the size of a paving stone. He looked back toward Will, who couldn’t hear any of this. His brother waved his hand in a mad circle, urging him to come back. But Bert couldn’t go yet. He had to hear what his father would say. Send Will to The Crags? They couldn’t—didn’t they know how scared Will got whenever he left the castle grounds? Bert leaned even closer to the window.
Father, please…